Why move to Canada (or, Why is Bush so bad)?

It is increasingly common for liberal Americans to decide to move to Canada after Nov. 2, 2004. The reasons are articulated somewhat, but it is necessary to fully explain why Canada is suddenly so appealing, and why Bush is what drove liberal Americans away.

The most basic reason is not Bush, personally, but what Bush represents. Ronald Reagan was just as hated by liberals throughout the 1980s, but Reagan never induced liberals to leave the country. Reagan had two things that Bush doesn't have. Reagan had peace and prosperity. Bush has neither. Now, ordinarily, when the country is at war and suffering economically, patriotic citizens stay to rebuild the country and fight against foreign enemies. Yet, this is not happening. The following reasons help us explain this.

• The United States is not in a necessary war for its survival against an entrenched enemy who could destroy us. Instead, neo-conservatives and the Religious Right have fabricated the conditions for an unnecessary war by portraying a small, loosely organized group of individuals - who got lucky on Sept. 11, 2001, by sneaking past our defenses - as the forefront of a tyrannical empire that can destroy the United States. This is a fabrication because there is no country, or group of countries, that can possibly destroy the United States either by launching nuclear weapons at it, invading it, or bankrupting it. Terrorism is a threat, but it is not a threat to national security. A threat to national security entails a threat to the lives of our elected leaders, and it must be continuous. The United States faces no such continuous threat to the lives of its elected leaders, or even to the lives of its people. Hence, Bush represents the fabrication of threat, the fabrication of unnecessary war, and thus he represents meaningless destruction. The neo-conservatives who write Bush's foreign policy know that terrorists are not a threat to our existence or way of life; instead, they simply want to promote American power, and use terrorist as a pretext for that promotion. Bush represents the Evil Empire now more than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany ever did. Bush uses the same rhetoric that was used by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany: saving western civilization, promoting our values, and protecting us from threat. The world saw through the false rhetoric of the Nazis and the Soviets, recognizing it as a raw quest for power masked as the attempt to save the world. The world now recognizes the false rhetoric that Bush uses. That's why the world sees him as a greater threat to the world than any small group of terrorists.

• The United States is unchallenged in its military or economic superiority, and so the biggest challenge comes from within. Liberals are not afraid of Bush. They are afraid of his supporters, now called the "American Taliban". The Religious Right is trying to turn the United States into a theocracy. They can succeed by eliminating the legal right to an abortion, and by changing the composition of the courts so that religious doctrine is promoted through laws. The United States is becoming exactly the kind of country that the Founder Fathers feared: a religious dictatorship. This religious dictatorship is supported by the deliberate ignorance of reality and science. Liberals can easily communicate with people who are up-to-date on the latest social and scientific research. Indeed, they seek out conversations based on these topics. Yet, they are being countered by religious people who deny the opportunity to communicate about these topics. The government does not need to have any laws prohibiting conversation on scientific topics; the Religious Right is promoting social censorship at the local level, such as in school boards and classrooms.

• Finally, Liberals do not have the ability to implement changes through the electoral process. Conservatives have convinced themselves that they have "won" because the rest of the country agrees with conservative ideas. However, in reality, the rest of the country agrees with liberal ideas about society, but conservative ideas about economics. Ronald Reagan made his greatest impact on the economic life of the country, not on the security of the country or the social life of the country. Liberals were trying to use economic tools in the 1960s and 70s to affect the security issues and social life of the country. When Reagan made an impact on the economic front, Liberal simply shifted to the social front and ignored the security front. Thus, while the Soviet Union collapsed quietly, surprising everyone, conservatives achieved economic victories while liberals achieved social victories. Now, with Bush, conservatives are attacking liberals on the economic front, the social front, and the security front. With this in mind, Liberals saw the 2004 election as the Do or Die election. Either get rid of Bush, or the United States is destroyed as a country. That's why Liberals went out to register new voters and get them to the polls on election day. Yet, on election day, Liberals discovered that conservatives had engineered election results in the following ways:

1. the thousands of new democratic voters that had been signed up to vote were not allowed to vote because of (a) legal challenges to their identity, residence, and citizenship; (b) the burden of time as these challenges were conducted, and because there were too few voting machines to go around (half as many compared to the primaries); (c) the changed results of the electronic voting machines, where voters picked Kerry, but then had their votes switched to Bush.
2. When Liberals realized this, they went to the Democratic Party, telling them that everyone had voted for Kerry, but that these various mechanisms had allowed Bush to win an illegitimate victory. The Democratic Party denied the Liberals a fair hearing, arguing that the Liberals were simply angry that Bush had won, and that the result could not be changed. In other words, the Liberals saw the election as Life or Death, while the Democratic Party saw the election as win or lose.
3. Hence, the Liberals lost faith in the ability of their leaders to secure legitimate electoral results. The Liberals knew that the election had been rigged, and that more people agreed with liberal social values than conservative social values. Yet, the Democratic leaders were too wimpy to do anything about these concerns.
4. The basic problem is that the Democratic Leadership is afraid of the Liberals, because it thinks, incorrectly, that the country actually agrees with the conservatives on social issues as well as economic issues. The Democratic Party is no longer an effective tool for Liberals to use to change the country, and since the Democratic Party is broken, Liberals have no choice but to go where the Democratic Party has succeeded: Canada.

I have chosen not to move to Canada because I live in one of the most liberal cities in the country, New York City. However, I also know that the national Democratic Party is broken because it is deluded that the country agrees with conservative social values rather than liberal social values. I know that the country is really liberal socially. Thus, I have made a vow. I will not vote in an any House, Senate, or Presidential race until the Democratic Party realizes that the rest of the country actually agrees with it on social matters and security issues. The real impact takes place at the local level, so that is where I will be active.